At the end of July and beginning of August I had a few days spare to do a short bike packing trip before a two week trip to Australia for work. A friend of mine, Alex, who I hadn’t seen in a while and had previously been living just outside Nagoya for more than a decade recently called time on his job, packed his bags, and moved out into the southern Nagano countryside with his young family. He moved to Urugi village (売木) which is fairly isolated and hidden away behind a number of mountain passes. Alex is planning on converting his house into a guest house for foreigners so if anybody is interested in staying please get in touch.

With that in mind I chose to plan a route that took in Urugi, where I could sleep the night in his traditional house, catch up on old times, and then head north to Mt. Nyukasa (入笠山) and Mugikusa Pass (麦草峠) in central Nagano. I originally planned to head further east to Tenryu (天龍) and cycle north from there but the road was closed due to a landslide. There was also a summer lightening storm when I arrived at the base of Mt. Nyukasa so it wan’t wise to ride up that either. However, I still managed to camp rough at Fujimi Panorama (富士見パノラマ), a popular mountain biking park/ski resort, and head up Mugikusa Pass the following day. I stashed all my gear in a bush at the bottom of the climb before heading up to 2128m. It was a climb I’d done on numerous occasions before so knew what to expect. Despite reaching more than 2000m the gradient never gets too difficult. On a clear day you are rewarded with some wonderful mountain views.

From the top of the pass I turned around, descended into Suwa (諏訪) and headed to Shiojiri (塩尻) where I caught the Shinano Express back to Aichi.

A short, cheap trip, but satisfying and as usual there was some breathtaking scenery.

Autumn is the perfect time of year for bike packing in Japan so expect some new routes/rides to appear here in the coming months.